


Heavy

by pommegranate



Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms
Genre: Destiny, Fate, Suicide, fate is a jerk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-17
Updated: 2016-12-17
Packaged: 2018-09-09 03:00:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8873092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pommegranate/pseuds/pommegranate
Summary: the cycle weighs heavily on link; a drabble





	

**Author's Note:**

> um i don't know. I haven't written anything like this in a long time and I kind of miss it. I have a lot of feels about Link. And Zelda, and Ganondorf. idk

The sword felt so heavy in his hands now. He had wielded it thousands of times, each lifetime more languid and painful than the one before it.

His hands were calloused from years worth of work: on the farm, on the battle field, pulling through stones in old temples and holding that heavy, weighty sword. The skin around his nails was cracked from use, his prints were worn away with time and hundreds of past selves who had worn through them. Hands that had seen hundreds of years – hands that had seen the old ages, the new ages and everything in between. They were scarred and his tendons ached even when he was a child.

Sometimes it happened when he was older, when he had thought he had gotten to experience life to the fullest. He'd wake up on the farm one day with a bright mark on his hand, his future and his past and his present etched into his skin eternally.

Had he every had a wife?  
  
Had he ever seen his child smile for the first time? Had he ever known a life that was peaceful and bright?

His hands were tired, his body was tired and his soul was exhausted. Drained of motivation and of energy – but still bound by duty to dance the same dance over and over again. Find the blade, wield the blade, slay the evil, save the princess. She never needed saving – she was strong and smart and capable. A goddess reborn and made mortal, all wisdom, beauty and consideration danced through her like the songs of old. She was eternal, she was powerful and she did not _need_ him despite the fact that that was how history had been written.

Born to fight. Whether it was the woods or the plains, he was there to fight. It was never purely for survival as many men did. He did not pick up the sword for his family, for himself – he picked it up from the stone each time because that was what fate expected of him and that was the aeons long burden that he bore since birth.

He wasn't ever looking at something for the first time. He saw the princess through years and years of lenses and time slipped together as all of her faces blended together and compounded into something he vaguely recognized. Blue eyes that were sharp and clear, as tired as his own, a pale face that he had once thought beautiful now marred by the constant reminder of destiny. She was always the same, just as he was. Just as the King was.

They were always the same and he was tired of it.

It was the same battle; the goddesses hands would lift him up when he was tired and wounded. Fairies healed his wounds, reminding him that he had been kinder before – he had been a lot younger then too and time wore on you after a while. Time crushed dreams and hopes and he was without those now. Time crushed bones, it made the sword heavy, it made the shield weigh him down. It made duty feel more than a stab in the back than a guiding light that pulled his sword to victory.

The sword felt so heavy in his hands as he stood before the Demon King and all of his darkness.

_I will strike you down, boy._ How many times before had he said it? A pang of desperation cut through the Hero as he stared up at him. He wouldn't strike him down – he had never done so before. It was his duty to win, it was his destiny to win. Every time he fought the Demon King he won. Every time they fought the cycle continued endlessly.

_The sword – you've made it stronger. But that does not matter._

Was he tired of this, too? Did he share the burden of memory?

The sword was so _damn_ heavy this time though. His hands could not grip it well, and as the Demon King rose his sword to meet it, he fell back.

_I can't._ He said, pulling way. Pulling far away.

The goddesses would urge him return to the battlefield. They whispered in his ears: this was his fight, this was his destiny. Slay the Demon King, end the evil.

But the Evil did not end. It would simply return. He knew it all too well and this time he could remember it all so clearly. It would all return – the evil, the pain he felt in his chest, the ache in his hands. The sullen look on the princess' face. It would return once again several years from now.

He had made the sword stronger this time for one purpose and one alone. It felt heavy in his hands, the burden of thousands of years weighed so heavily on his back. This time though he did not wield the blade against the Demon King and instead turned it on himself, the blade plunging deep into his torso. He felt the rip of it through his bones, through his guts. The horrified shriek from the princess, the look of awe and confusion on the face of the Demon King.

He was going to break the damn cycle and he hoped it would be the last thing he ever did.  
  
With the sword plunged him he felt some far away relief. A snap of something – a bright light of some kind that he had never seen before. Just as his consciousness slipped and his body fell from the mount on high that had served as their final battlefield, he could see the Demon King and the princess look between one another, shocked. And then there was nothing.

 

There was nothing.

 

Nothing. He was finally free.

 

His eyes opened and he found himself standing before a stone pedestal, sword in hand again. A pain shot through his abdomen and when he rose his free hand to feel for it there was nothing there. The Hero grimaced and the companion to his side asked if he was fine.

“Link, are you all right? You look like you've remember something horrible!” A hand on his back. A small zora girl with a bright smile and curious eyes reached her fingers up to tug playfully on the edge of his cap. “So did you remember anything about your life before? Everyone said you might!”

The sword suddenly felt so heavy in his hands that he dropped it and it clamored to the ground. The winged guard caught on the pedestal and that yellow gem in the centered flashed in his eyes, reminding him of all the times he had wielded it. All the times he had brought it through the body of the Demon King, all the monsters he had slain. All of the time he had spent acting as a puppet to the self serving deities above and below.

No matter what he did or who he turned the sword on he was bound to wield it. Bound to find it, bound to carry it.

She reached down and picked up the sword for him, “Careful! You wouldn't want to chip it. I mean... we have to find someone to sharpen it anyway, right? Right, Link?”Her hands extended the sword towards him and Link stared at the cold, hard ground of the temple for a long pained moment before he finally reached his hand up and squeezed it around the blue leather handle.

“We've got a lot of work to do, we don't have time to stop and get it sharpened by a blacksmith.”

His eyes closed as he held the sword out.

It felt heavier than it had ever felt before.

 


End file.
